Desert Rose
by Chris Ganale
Summary: Inspired by Battlefield 1942 and a bad mood, there is this oneshot. Squall, Rinoa, and Seifer storm a hill in the middle of a desert tank battle, but things don't go as well as planned. Squinoa, character death.


It's that time, again, kids! Time for a one-shot from good ol' Chris Ganale. This one is quite different from Heaven, as it was written while I was pissed off at Battlefield 1942, depressed about having missed talking to my girlfriend by one damn minute, and while listening to the song Desert Rose by Sting.

This is more or less an AU version of a potential war in my Liberi Fatali Gaian RP. Rinoa, Squall, and Seifer storm a hill to attack Galbadian tanks from the side, but things don't go as well as they should.

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 8, Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat, or any organizations herein. The plot is mine however. Steal without credit and you'll do good not to eat eggs for breakfast anymore.

* * *

War, literally and without recourse, was hell. Squall staggered in full run as another explosion went off just a few feet to his side. He could feel the glassed sand cutting into his face and desert fatigues as he ran, but didn't dare slow down. Bullets tore up the sand around him as he and his comrades ran full-on toward the unmanned machine gun nest atop a hill in the middle of no man's land, two hundred feet or more beyond friendly lines.

He couldn't even pronounce the name of this godforsaken spit of sand that he had committed SeeD to fight and die on. He, like the vast majority of the Garden, merely referred to it as the "Cactuar Desert." The sun was blinding, the sand burned exposed skin on contact, and the heat was just as unrelenting as their enemy.

Galbadian tanks roared past them on all sides, most seeming to be single-mindedly assaulting the SeeD bunkers. Most of them probably didn't recognize the trio as the most dangerous fighters that SeeD had to offer, and those that did had more important things to focus on: namely SeeD's tanks and rocket-equipped soldiers.

A Galbadian armored personnel carrier suddenly roared around the bend of the road, bearing right down on Squall and Rinoa with its forward guns blazing. Shouldering his light anti-tank weapon, Squall grabbed Rinoa by her arm and pushed her ahead of him toward the hill, then turned toward the APC and went down to a knee.

The APC was close; maybe fifty feet away from him. He lighted his finger on the trigger and placed his eye to the targeting scope. Once certain that the rocket would fly up into the upward-sloping front armor, he squeezed the trigger hard. Black smoke billowed around him as the recoil forced his upper body back, but the rocket sailed straight and true. It lanced straight up into the APC and exploded, destroying the vehicle and killing most of its occupants.

Squall stood up and turned to follow Rinoa and Seifer, discarding the spent rocket casing and reaching for another rocket as he did so. Ahead of him, Seifer had already reached the hill and was manning the .50-caliber machine gun to deter any Galbadian infantry from picking shots at the running SeeDs. Seconds later, Rinoa reached the top of the hill and vaulted over the sandbags, disappearing on the other side.

From the corner of his eye, Squall saw the main gun of a Galbadian heavy tank lining up to fire on him. Taking a chance, he dove forward, sailing over the sandbags just as the shell exploded behind him, spraying Seifer with glassed sand. The blond gunblade wielder swung the machine gun around and sprayed fire at the tank, giving Squall plenty of time to pop up and fire his last rocket into the vehicle's turret.

Rinoa quickly checked him over once for injuries, then crawled on her stomach further back in the sandbagged area, keeping watch for any tanks or infantry trying to sneak attack them from behind. As he watched her go, Squall noticed the crate of rockets and other ammunition behind the sandbag barricade. He nodded slowly. With such a supply, the three of them could hold this position for a long time.

He crawled toward the box and pulled out a dozen rockets, laying them on the ground at his feet. The sound of the G-Army tanks' engines was loud in his ears as he removed the spent casing and replaced it with a fresh rocket, then peeked over the sandbags to locate the tank he'd already hit. The smoking vehicle wasn't hard to find.

Rising up to a knee, he aimed the launcher so that the downward arc would land it right on the rear quarter of the stationary vehicle and squeezed the trigger. He dropped back down to the sand to avoid being hit rather than wait around to see whether or not he hit it. But that was unnecessary; the loud explosion nearby let him know that his shot had flown true.

"Good shot, Squall," Seifer called, ducking away from return fire before he let loose another volley of fire with the machine gun.

"Thanks," Squall replied as he reloaded his weapon. "Rinoa? What's our rear look like?"

"Nothing's coming up at us," she answered, staring through the scope of her weapon. "Three more tanks and two APCs coming up on your side, though."

Hit the APCs first. One shot will take them out...

Squall watched through a crack in the sandbag wall as the enemy armor approached. Just as he was about to rise up to fire, one of the APCs exploded under concentrated fire from Seifer's machine gun post. Quickly adjusting his target, Squall fired at the rear of one of the tanks, the impact and force of the hit lifting the vehicle's front in the air momentarily as smoke began to issue from the turret. He dropped again, and began reloading.

As he did so, he spared a glance back to Rinoa to see how she was faring. Either she had been spotted, or the Galbadians had figured out that it wasn't their people firing the machine gun and rockets. She was firing steadily downhill, shying away from fire every now and again and reloading when necessary.

Just as he finished reloading his LAW, Squall heard Rinoa cry out and immediately he turned in her direction. She was in the process of falling onto her back and scooting away from where she had been, her weapon forgotten on the ground as she clutched at her left shoulder. The upper left arm of her fatigues was already stained red.

"Rinoa!" Squall shouted, standing up and running toward her, the LAW already balanced on his shoulder in firing position. He came up to where she had been defending, quickly locating and bringing his line of sight to bear on the APC that had hit her with one of its machine guns.

He fired. The rocket roared down the hill and smashed through the gun turret of the APC, exploding inside and detonating the APC like a rotten fruit. Metal fragments and pieces of soldiers flew in all directions.

"Squall, get down!" Seifer called. "There's a–"

The last word of Seifer's sentence had been "sniper," but Squall didn't have the time to register that. All he managed to register was the searing pain just under his left shoulder, and across a straight line through his body and ending in his right shoulder blade.

The rocket launcher crashed to the desert sands as he half-spun away from the direction of the shot, pain filling his being as he collapsed on his stomach on the burning sands. More pain shot through him at the impact, and he found he didn't have the strength to roll himself over.

"Squall!" Rinoa shrieked, and he could feel her hands on his back, could just barely feel the warmth emanating from them as she attempted to cure him. "No! Please, Hyne! You can't die here! Squall!"

"Rinoa!" Seifer called over the roar of the machine guns and the din of the explosions all around them. "Help me! I can't hold them off by myself!"

Words failed Rinoa then, as she realized that her curative spells were not working at all. She gently grabbed Squall's left arm and rolled him over onto his back, tears flowing down her face as she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dying.

His face a mask of pain, Squall reached up his right hand slowly and brushed his fingers against her cheek. "Rin... He-help... Seif...er..."

"No!" she cried, pressing her forehead against his as she tightly grasped his hand. "Don't die on me, Squall. Please... I can't... I can't live without you..."

Slowly, painfully, Squall brought up his other arm and draped it across her shoulders; his best attempt at a hug. He didn't say anything, for fear that his voice would break. He could feel the tears on his face. He wasn't crying because he was dying, he was crying because all the possibilities of a future with Rinoa were being denied him.

Rinoa was crying openly, the pain of her own wound forgotten, unable to match the grief she felt inside herself that the love of her life was dying on these godforsaken sands, and she could do nothing to save him. The most powerful sorceress alive, gifted with the power of a grand total of three sorceresses, and she could not even save the life of the one she loved.

Up at the machine gun, Seifer grunted in surprise and fell back against the sandbags, bleeding from several points on his chest. He hadn't been shot; instead had taken shrapnel from a tank shell exploding mere feet away from him. Looking over to find Rinoa unable to do anything but cry over Squall's imminent death, he reached into his pack of supplies and pulled out a potion, which he quickly downed the contents of. The pain subsided, but his injuries were still bleeding. No matter; they'd all be dead soon anyway.

He looked beyond Rinoa and Squall to see a pair of APCs making their way up the hill toward their position. Things didn't look good at all...

"Rinoa..." he croaked. "We're about to have company."

She glanced up momentarily, looked behind her to see the advancing Galbadians, then back down at Squall, holding his hand tightly as she laid her head on his chest. "Squall, I love you."

As Seifer crawled toward them, gunblade in hand, Rinoa reached down to her belt and unclipped a fragmentation grenade. Flicking out the pin with her thumb, she tried to throw it down the hill toward the approaching Galbadians, but her injured arm lacked the strength. The grenade hit the ground at their feet and slowly started rolling down the hill.

_Shit,_ Seifer thought. _Too close. The blast is gonna kill us..._

Squall turned his head partially toward Seifer and fought to lift up his right hand. Nodding in understanding, Seifer clasped his fellow gunblade user's hand tightly with his own.

"It's been a pleasure, Commander," Seifer said, for once dropping the halfway-insulting title that he normally attached to the end.

Squall nodded painfully. "You too...Seifer..."

Sobbing, Rinoa turned Squall's head back toward her, then slowly lowered her own head to kiss him for the last time. Her tears flowing down her face had cut swaths through the sand and dust coating her face.

"I love...you...Rinoa," Squall mumbled against her lips.

"I love you too," she answered, resting her forehead against his as she turned her head slightly to see the grenade still rolling, painfully slowly, away from them. "We'll be together forever..."

Then the grenade exploded, and darkness befell all three of them.

* * *

:O  
  
OMG! Did they live? Did they die? Oo!! I intentionally left it as a cliff-hanger. When I started writing, I had intended to have Rinoa pull the pin and hide the grenade, then pull it out and smirk at the Galbadians when they surrounded them. But then I got sad because Rinoa would have died, and I consider my girlfriend to be a living Rinoa so... ..  
  
Maybe if you ask nicely enough, and I get inspired enough, I can either turn Desert Rose into its own series, or I can combine it and Heaven, and throw in other shit, and more or less novelize the Liberi Fatali RP.  



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